BlackPast is dedicated to providing reliable information on the history of Black people across the globe, and especially in North America. Our goal is to promote greater understanding of our common human experience through knowledge of the diversity of the Black experience and the ubiquity of the global Black presence. 

It’s Pride month and we feature the many contributions of Black LGBTQIA+ individuals to American and global history and culture. We have a curated page sponsored by the Pride Foundation which you can find here.

A register of ‘Negroes in Organized Baseball’ in the 19th-century lists close to fifty individuals who participated in the sport in the decade or two before the Negro League appeared. Moses Fleetwood Walker, an Ohio-born catcher who played for Oberlin College’s inaugural varsity team in 1881 and then the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1883, was one of them. He played for Toledo in 1884 when the organization joined the American Association, and the team was promoted to the major league. Walker played 42 games for Toledo and was the last African American to play for a major league team until Jackie Robinson walked on the field in his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform on April 16, 1947. Walker was a confident and intellectual person who challenged dominant White American attitudes toward Blacks. He published a newspaper focused on African American issues and was unafraid to share his views. Read the entry on Walker to learn more about his life on and off the field.

L- R: Moses Fleetwood Walker, Lincoln Giants, Philadelphia Bacharach, John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, and Andrew “Rube” Foster.

By 1900 the Colored Baseball Leagues had emerged. The professional teams were in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk, West Virginia. A standout name of that era is the powerful slugger, Spottswood Poles, who was associated with the Hillsdale athletics club, the Philadelphia Lincoln Giants, for whom he allegedly batted a .440 in 1911, and the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants. The Giants also fielded the powerful shortstop, John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, who began his career with the Cuban Giants where he earned the nickname “El Cuchara”. Lloyd was considered by Babe Ruth to be the greatest baseball player of all time.

The Negro National League was founded in 1920 and was the brainchild of Andrew “Rube” Foster, who also discovered John Henry “Pop” Lloyd. The league had an eight-team circuit, including Chicago, which had two teams, the Cuban Stars, and six other city-based teams: Dayton, Detroit, St Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Dayton, and Detroit. Players were not professionals and games were held after work. On Sundays there were “doubleheaders” which drew crowds in the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands.

Following Foster’s death there was a brief hiatus between 1930-1934 when the league was revived. The creation of the Negro American Leage in 1937 opened the game up to even more talent. These regional leagues were a major source of entertainment and training ground for the Black talent recruited by major league teams after World War Two. We pay homage to the League and some of its star players.